Get Energy Smart! NOW!

“Those who seek to demonize coal or eliminate its use are, quite honestly, disconnected from reality.”  Dominion Resources CEO Thomas F Farrell, II 

What is the reality that we are disconnected from?

• The 3.5 million tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxide, 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 48 tons of mercury, 56 tons of arsenic, 134,000 tons of hydrochloric acid and 130 million tons of toxic-laden waste from US coal-fired electricity plants each year?
• A warming planet?  And, the quite likely possibility that we need to figure out how to reduce not our emissions, but how to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
• Mountain-top removal’s devastation?

I’d ask “what planet do you live on, Tom”, but really the question is: 

What planet do you want my and your children to live in?

[Read more →]

When it comes to law, my favorite website is without doubt Warming Law, which provides a high quality and thoughtful look at climate issues from a legal and judicial standpoint. One recent post deal with the question of ‘why bother’ with lawsuits and not simply wait until Bush W heads off into the sunset.
[Read more →]

While America’s Fossil Fools seek to continue America’s oil addiction, Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative is setting off on a serious path toward a 21st century, renewable energy future. Last month,Masdar and the Spanish firm Sener announced the formation of Torresol Energy, a joint venture to build large-scale concentrating solar plants around the world.
[Read more →]

Representative Patrick McHenry made a name for himself in 2007 as seriously Energy Dumb in his truthiness attack on the Energy Bill as focused on bicycles as the solution path. Amid the $billions of spending (and tax benefits) under consideration, the insightful McHenry focused on $1 million per year in spending on bicycles as somehow representing “the” Democratic solution path to America’s energy challenges.  While McHenry did use a true fact (yes, there was $1 million in funding), his commentary was neither truthful nor speaking truth, since it tried to represent this extremely small portion of the bill as central and somehow quite significant. (If he had used more accurate words like “less than 1/100 of 1 percent of funding”, would his demogogy perhaps been undermined?)

Well, Energy Dumb McHenry showed his idiocy in the past month with his words and actions in Iraq. And, sadly, the idiocy goes well past questions of energy.

[Read more →]

Global Warming “Deniers” and “Skeptics” trot out any and every true item in twisted truthiness discussions that are neither true nor truthful. With areas getting more snowfall and uncertainty over data (after all, how many penguins are sitting and checking the thermometer every morning?), “Antarctica is cooling” has been a frequent denier/skeptic truthiness line to try to sidetrack substantive discussions about Global Warming/Climate Change and what to do about it.

Well, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. This one, aggragating ten years of data, is worth far more than that. Thank you NASA.

[Read more →]

After the fold, take a look at the graphic.  From NASA, this is a clear and simple path toward refutation of another of the deniers/skeptics misleading truthiness. Yes, there are a few spots (and, almost literally, spots) in Antarctica that are cooling but those are (quite sadly) overwhelmed by the areas warming.

[Read more →]

Forty years ago, an asassin’s bullet ended Martin Luther King, Jr’s life. Left behind has been a powerful legacy, one that has helped shift the American ethos toward something better than what might have been without King. Within his legacy are some of the most recognized words of American history …

I have a dream …

At this time, in Memphis, over 1000 people are gathered for The Dream Reborn,  a conference dedicated to commemorate the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and to “present positive solutions for social and environmental equity from today’s generation of visionary leaders.”

[Read more →]

Bjorn Lomborg has taken some real heat for his misrepresentations within and truthiness permeating his fantasy work Cool It. Over at SolveClimate, the typically excellent David Sassoon has taken the time to pull the string on the “evidence” for one of Lomborg’s key claims, that cold kills some 1.5 million Europeans each year and that extreme cold is more dangerous than extreme heat. At the end of the process, David finds: nothing there.
[Read more →]

Take a look at the Drudge Report’s header:

These three link to fundamentally dishonest pieces, as The Wonk Room so clearly lays out.

[Read more →]

Anyone with an open mind realizes that the “Straight Talk Express” has little relationship with action for McFlip, McFlop, McSame McCain as the man (the politician) truly seems to excel at telling people to “Do as I say, not as I do.”  Sadly, this is the case when it comes to Global Warming, where McCain’s Green Straight Talk Express is truly a Dirty Energy Twisted Delay Action Machine.  Reality aside, McCain surrogates are seeking to create an image of John McCain as a real green machine. 

About McSame McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) emphasizes that the McSame, that “he’s not going to run away from President Bush.” That is probably true and truthful on many issues. McCain will probably pretty much McSame as the ever so-successful Bush-Cheney Administration.  Graham, goes further, however, in claim that McCain has done more on Global Warming than former Vice President Al Gore.

[Read more →]